The initial experience that a first-time user has with new software is an incredibly useful event to witness and record. And it only happens once for each person — after that, they are already somewhat aware of the software and how it works. So, user experience testing at this stage is designed to gather the most amount of feedback from users, on all aspects of their experience — things like their thoughts on the look and feel of the software, their expectations on what it should “do,” and how effectively it “does” that at this point in development. Even people’s facial expressions are important if you can get them — they can tell you when someone “doesn’t get it” right away, and how long it takes them to figure “it” out. It’s incredibly interesting from a software design perspective, but even more interesting from a psychological perspective.

For AEP, a number of individual artists and small organizations were invited to participate in this first round of testing. They were given the url and password to the AEP demo site, and asked to create an account, login, play around, create some content, and generally kick the software around a bit and see how it worked.

The testers were split into two groups — one group was given detailed instructions on how to login and do all of these things, and the other was given almost no information. This A/B test was designed to show how easily understood the functionality of this early stage of development was without training for the “B” group, vs. the “hand holding” of the “A” group.

After a set testing period, I contacted the testers individually, and scheduled interview times to meet with them and discuss their experience in AEP. The AEP staff and I had designed a number of questions to ask the testers to help them describe their experience in a way that would create useful feedback for the AEP developers. There were 15 questions, including:

* What do you think AEP is now? What is it being designed to accomplish?
* How do you hope those goals and functionality will fit into your organization?
* What did you think about the look and design of the site? How does it compare to other sites you frequent?

The feedback from the testers was very interesting — it’s remarkable how certain people are very focused on one aspect — say, look & feel — while others are totally focused on some other specific aspect. With the variety of testers we were able to interview, we received a healthy view of how these early users view AEP, and that info will be used to improve the product into the next testing stage.

Sharing a product at an early a stage is always somewhat anxiety-inducing for any developer. But the feedback you receive can offer the potential for detailed levels of course correction that would be too costly to discover later on, as well as validation that the choices you’ve made up to this point in development were ultimately accepted and understood by your users. I’d like to thank the initial testers for their dedication and great feedback, and I look forward to working with them in future testing stages!

Ron

Ron Evans, Principal
Groupofminds.com Arts Marketing Consulting

1) in creating access and ways of experiencing the art and

2) as part of the art itself.

Today I thought I’d share a few thoughts on the first, and write more about the second at a later time.

I am both very interested in artistic creation itself, and in the ways that audiences connect with it, and are impacted by it. I believe that audiences are inherently co-producers, in that they bring their own history and ways of seeing to the art as they experience it. Since there are many different kinds of people seeing any single work of art, I aim to create multiple access points which people can choose to augment their overall experience. These are ways that individuals can gain access to the art, creation process, and to the community around the art. Technology provides ways for artists to extend and manage these exchanges for their audiences, which has driven my interest in making the web easier for myself, and for other artists to use.

While I haven’t stopped choreographing for more that six months at a time since I was 14 years old, my undergraduate degree was actually in Public Policy, focusing on federal level involvement in the arts and education. In addition, I spent a lot of time taking and being a teaching assistant for computer science classes, and worked in the Brown University Computer Graphics research group. I started to recognize how creative software programming could be, and even to see some parallels to the choreographic process. While I haven’t personally written software code for years, these above experiences fed my familiarity with and interest in applying the smart use of technology to helping artists on a systems level to involve audiences in realizing their artistic visions.

As the founder of a small dance company in NYC, I experience first-hand the challenges of managing the company, alongside creating art. My interest is to engage our audiences around both the artistic and production process, so that they can feel closer to the experience, and so that artists can both deepen their impact on audiences and benefit from the partnership of audiences in helping to support the growth of their work.

Yes, managing a software development process is quite different from being in the dance studio. But at core, building AEP is about furthering the mission of our artistic work, to create deeper impact on our audiences and to progress the art.

–Chris

Chris Elam
Artistic Director
Misnomer Dance Theater
www.misnomer.org

Speaking at TEDx was amazing. I’m a huge fan of the TED video series, and knew that what I shared during my presentation would be viewed by a really large audience from a broad range of backgrounds. I wanted to bring attention to the subject of how we as audiences and artists shape our relationships to the arts, and the opportunities to co-produce and collaborate as active cultural participants. That’s one of the main points of why we wanted to create AEP, and it was an honor to spread the word about the great movement that artists are taking to give audiences more involvement. I was one of seven speakers at the event, including great talks by the founder of MeetUp.com and the CEO of GroundReport.com

It was particularly exciting to perform my dance solo “Cast Iron Crutches” for the audience before I spoke. I think there was something magical in preparing people to talk about the interaction between art and technology by allowing them to see the art and then hear from the artist immediately after. It was a thrilling challenge to dance a 5-minute solo and then change out of my costume in 20 seconds and go directly into speaking for another 5 minutes!  My heart was beating quickly during the talk from having just danced, but that’s live performance, and part of the charm which the audience seemed to enjoy. I’m glad the video captured both live, and I hope you enjoy watching it here:

-Chris

We are delighted to give a “sneak peek” at AEP, on the eve of beginning alpha testing with a select group of artists. AEP is projected to have its public launch later this year, so sign up now on the “Connect With AEP” tab above to keep updated! See below for info on attending and to read about the other great presenters!

ART START-UPS SHOWCASE
When: Sun, Mar 7, 2010 12:00 PM – Sun, Mar 7, 2010 12:45 PM
This session will feature a diverse selection of some of the best arts-related start-ups New York City’s innovative technology community has to offer. Each presenter will have 5 minutes to deliver an overview of their product and demonstrate its significance to the cultural sector. Presenters include:

THE AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT PLATFORM FOR THE ARTS (AEPlatform.org)
AEP is an open-source platform that helps artists design and efficiently manage their relationships with audiences, while giving individual audience members exciting ways to interact with artists and the arts. AEP aims to extend the meaningful moment of the live performance and transform how art fits into our daily lives. Created by and for artists, AEP is developed for the arts fields by Misnomer Dance Theater, a dance company based in Brooklyn, New York.

AVIARY
Aviary is a pioneering and leading provider of fully web-based design tools. With a suite of digital creation software available as an online service, Aviary offers a simple and cost-effective solution for creators of all genres – from graphic design to audio editing – to produce, modify, and share digital creations. Based in New York and backed by leading investors and visionaries such as Spark Capital, Jeff Bezos, Joi Ito and Reid Hoffman among others, Aviary is changing the way digital assets are created and distributed online.

TOURA
Toura’s mission is to be the leading technology platform for the efficient and cost-effective creation and distribution of smartphone-based mobile guides for the travel and tourism industry and its customers around the world. Mobile guides created with the Toura platform will entertain and educate onsite and offsite “visitors” to a broad range of travel and tour attractions, including museums, galleries, zoos, parks, historic sites, trails, stadiums, universities, and others.

ART.SY
Art.sy is the place to buy, sell, and discover original fine art online. Our online gallery benefits both professional artists and traditional galleries by increasing exposure to collectors and creating more sales. Art.sy does this by making your art easily discoverable and shareable on social networks like Facebook and Twitter. This way it’s more likely that the right collector will find you, so you don’t have to spend all your time trying to find them. The result: more sales and more time to focus on just creating beautiful art.

TRANSIT
Transit is a web publishing system for creative individuals to own and completely customize their own space on the web. With a comprehensive plugin system and drag-and-drop layout, Transit makes it simple to share media, fund new projects, and participate directly in the new media economy without being held hostage by a huge portal company. Transit is currently in late-stage prototype, and the creators are looking for feedback from independent media makers on where to take the platform next.

If you haven’t already, please sign up below to get updates when AEP is ready for public launch. We’ll reach-out to you at key milestones to seek your input on AEP. Thanks!

The Idea
We are focusing on solving the problem of how to keep the connection between artists and patrons active and engaging in between performance seasons. AEP will allow you create a place where you communicate, entertain, and engage current and new patrons and will allow patrons to have a place where they can consume the artist expression that they enjoy on a regular basis. Every idea begins with some writing on a napkin. So I wanted to share ours with you. I’ll be following up soon with more posts on the specifics behind these but here’s a sneak peek!

What is AEP?
AEP – or the Audience Engagement Platform – is an innovative web-based communications network that is being designed to connect performing artists, and the environments within which they work, with their audiences – patrons, contributors, the media, and potential funders. It aims to be a “one-stop” service for online audience engagement that builds off of the extraordinary technical advances utilized in the commercial and social sectors.  AEP is designed as a long-term, arts-wide solution that will facilitate meaningful and productive two-way interaction between those who create art and those who appreciate it.

Who Does It Serve?
A resource to the creative community as well as those who support the arts, AEP will help artists to actively engage their audiences in an on-going dialogue about the work being created, providing the opportunity for arts enthusiasts to go behind the scenes and actually participate in the creative process. In addition, because of its reach, AEP aims to help captivate and cultivate arts donors, maximize media coverage, and provide an unprecedented communication network, going far beyond the traditional confines of artist and audience and in some ways, re-defining what it means to be an audience.

Why Is It Needed?
Over 40% of all Americans attend performing arts events each year and there are over 6 million artists working in America. While each interacts with his/her own audience base perhaps once or twice a year, their cumulative reach is enormous. Artists have a huge opportunity to engage their audiences through the web, yet with uncertainty about which tools to use and to what degree, artists often feel stranded, frustrated, and static in their audience outreach.  AEP will simplify and streamline the various online vehicles available, and create effective and efficient ways of engaging and growing audiences. For audiences it will provide unprecedented and meaningful ways to feel close and involved as a partner in the arts.

How Does It Work?
For artists, arts organizations and theaters, AEP will provide an easy-to-use set of web tools that can be customized to their needs, offering a built-in customer relationship management database, messaging, and incentives center. This platform provides the ability to mobilize audiences, inviting them to engage with the arts as active partners. This synthesis occurs through innovative web interactions that allow emailing, blogging, live-streaming, instant messaging and much more to occur all through one portal. AEP aims to virtually transport the user directly into the creative process, allowing arts enthusiasts to interact with the artists in ways never before imagined.

Download the AEP brochure (PDF)

Initial funding toward the development of the Audience Engagement Platform is provided in part by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Nonprofit Finance Fund, and The Rockefeller Foundation.